The Hampton City Council held a work session on August 13, 2025, at 1:05 PM in Council Chambers, 22 Lincoln Street, Hampton, VA. Mayor Jimmy Gray, Vice Mayor Steven L. Brown, and all councilmembers were present. The meeting included presentations on Fort Monroe, accessory dwelling unit zoning amendments, a stakeholder group on camping on public property, the Office of Youth & Young Adult Opportunities annual report, and the Summer Youth Employment Program success coaches capstone. The meeting adjourned at 3:55 PM, after which the council convened a closed session for real estate and appointments.
And welcome to the Hampton City Council afternoon work session. I'm going to ask the clerk to call the road, please. Councilman Bowman. Present. Vice Mayor Brown. Here. Councilwoman Campbell, present. Councilwoman Faraby. Present. Councilwoman Harper. Present. Councilwoman Muggler. Present. Mayor Gray. Present. And we have a pretty full agenda this afternoon with presentations, and so I'm going to get right to them by asking the city managers to introduce the first one. Yes, we're so excited to have with us today our new executive director of the Fort Monroe Authority, Scott Martin, so that the council can formally meet him at our chambers. I know many of you met with him individually. And we also want to make sure our larger community meets him. We're so blessed to have him join the Fort Monroe Authority as the executive director. He brings a lot of expertise to Hampton and his prior work. He most recently was in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Chattanooga became the first city to become a national park city in America. The others were, I think Sydney, Australia, if I'm not mistaken, and I'm forgetting the one London. London. So he he uh clearly has a respect for the natural resources and the role in placemaking and also history and and the role that they can history brings to a community, and is the ideal director for Fort Monroe Authority at its place and time. And the Fort Monroe Authority is getting ready to embark on an exciting initiative to update its master plan and landscape management efforts. And Mr. Martin wanted to share that with you and also just share where we are with the Fort and its planning efforts. And so we're glad to have Mr. Martin with us today. He just recently got back from vacation, and this is his first stop. So thank you for being with us today. Glad to be here. Pardon the jet lag, yeah, it was late last night, but let's see what the heck I say today. Uh thank you for the generous uh introduction. I'll skip that and jump right into Fort Monroe's site. Many of y'all know well. Um, and just hitting the highlights as a refresher. It is a jointly managed site between the Commonwealth of Virginia, of course, and the U.S. National Park Service, both with core missions to deliver there, and you see both the mission and requirements that we have in front of you. Um, a couple things. We number one, despite all of that, it's really all about partnerships and collaborations. And the good news is that Fort Monroe does not stand alone. We are in a neighborhood of projects across the country that you see on the screen that have similar governance structures set up. And you see some big ones up there. Um, you see Jekyll Island, um, you see Bryant Park, you see the Presidio. So we are in the right room when it comes to doing region shaping infrastructure projects on the cutting edge right now. We have about a half a million visits per year. It's a national historic landmark.